Mindy Project recap: “Teen Patient”

With each new episode, The Mindy Project appears to be slipping further away from its initial promise of strong, structured characters.

This week we meet Sophie – a girl that lives in Mindy’s building. Mindy patronizes Sophie and treats her as if she is much younger than fifteen. When Sophie pops into Mindy’s office for birth control, instead of being a responsible adult, Mindy disputes that Sophie is much too young and insists that she meets with her boyfriend first. Which is an apt example as any of Mindy’s wading away from the interdependent womanly aspirations she aimed to aspire to in the series’ pilot.

Here are the episode highlights in the form of quote analysis:

“Normally, I go for super skinny white girls, but something about this one screamed ‘Yeah, okay.’”

“I’m sorry, what?” Is the type of response I was hoping to hear from Mindy when her boyfriend Josh explained to Sophie how they met. Instead Mindy doesn’t flinch. But no, what really gets to Mindy is Josh’s inability to tell her whether or not they’d be together forever. Since, you know, things like that are easier to predict after a couple months of solid dating. Just kidding.

“I think sometimes you just need your boss to tell you that you look sexy.”

Betsy is once again handed poor servings from her writers, as we find her jealous of Morgan’s male gaze upon colleague Shauna. As a result, she turns to hyper-masculine Danny for some validation. Things get particularly boring at the office when Mindy isn’t around.

“Okay, here is what I have observed about you teenagers… you are obsessed with eternity, everything is forever… I’ll tell you one thing that always lasts forever. Herpes. It’s gross, and it’s horrible, Google Image search it.”

Mindy makes it her duty to rescue Sophie from the dangers of sex, which is a bit silly since Sophie did the responsible thing and sought out birth control in the first place. So, instead of being responsible, Mindy runs back to her high school to give a Republican style speech about abstinence.

Mindy’s monologue above also comes off as more self-serving than anything else, especially since Josh couldn’t admit to being a “forever kind of guy.” It’s also strange that she is doling out advice to impressionable youth since she is the last person qualified to do so.

Summary

At the end, of the episode Mindy and Sophie reconcile. Sophie decides to wait for sex after all! Josh also reappears and gifts Mindy a travel size deodorant to apologize, and they decide to keep the possibility of ‘forever’ in mind.

The episode takes us from an office-based comedy to the set of Glee. One might think this would shake things up, unfortunately, we still get the same predictable formula: (1) Audience finds it hard to relate to Mindy’s overreactions (due in part to poor character development); (2) Best gal pal Gwen exists only to answer crisis phone calls from Mindy and distill fortune-cookie style advice; (3) One or two hinting lines about Mindy’s inevitable romance with Danny; (4) Parallel plot lines featuring an underdeveloped supporting cast. Last night my friend lamented, “I want to like Mindy so bad.” But, with a formula like this, it gets harder every week.